Villains Out Shopping / Webcomics

"The secret wars, assassinations, and the wholesale planet destruction can wait.
I'm treating myself...
to a little Caribbean Vacay."

— Archcount Obdrath Von Lucifuge, Starslip Crisis

• 8-Bit Theater: When loser sociopath Black Mage unexpectedly finds himself without his despised bunch of "allies" (aka The Light Warriors), he enjoys the freedom from their quest to fulfill his lifelong dream of... becoming a cobbler's apprentice. After murdering the previous owner of a cobbling shop (the man made the mistake of rebuffing Black Mage's application), Black Mage takes over as the new owner. (The amazing thing, knowing Black Mage, is he did ask beforehand, but the more amazing thing is that he actually sticks with the job.) Turns out, he is surprisingly good at making shoes. Something of a wasted talent, what, with all his usual plans for death and destruction and sacrificing orphans to the Dark Gods, that is.
  • In true Black Mage form, though, he does make shoes out of the COBBLER HE SLAUGHTERED.
• In Clan of the Cats, Dracula has been revived after years of being dead. The first thing he does is...go shopping for Dracula memorabilia.
• DMFA does this a lot.
  • Dark Pegasus mixes this with But for Me, It Was Tuesday by casually having dinner after defeating Dan and several amazons.
  • Occurs en mass in the yearly evil beach party.
  • Invoked by Kria multiple times as a way to spend time with and comfort some of the less murderous people she associates with.
  • Regina and Dark Pegasus bicker over hand lotion. The author lampshades in the comment box that " I cannot deny I have a special love for just dropping in on characters at very mundane moments in their lives. It amuses me to no end."
• In Everyday Heroes, Mr. Mighty steps out his of front door one morning to find his arch-nemesis, Dr. Unpleasant, volunteering as a school crossing guard.
• When Connie Logan, who turns out to be The Mole, is first introduced in the Heroes Interquel webcomics, she's preoccupied with trying to set up a hot date for her daughter rather than any Agent Provocateur sabotage or murder conspiracies.
• Kill Your Darlings: Umbra goes out in The City in civilian clothing in one of the later episodes, only to get chased by Maroon.
• The entire point of The Last Days of FOXHOUND, which mostly shows the titular group when they aren't performing super duper top secret missions or plotting global revolutions.
  • At one point, Sniper Wolf gets her prescription for Tranquilizers refilled.
• A Miracle of Science has a variation: the villain is seen doing things such as pruning his plants or conducting an orchestra, but it's always for the purpose of improving his machines (e.g. the pruning is a performance test for a motion controlled robot), as his Science-Related Memetic Disorder makes it impossible for him to do anything that isn't related to his obsession; he may be out shopping, but he's only shopping for things that will assist his plans.
• The hero and the villain are both shopping in this page of The Non-Adventures of Wonderella.
• A few strips in The Order of the Stick have gags where the characters talk about how evil Xykon is, and then cut to him doing something incongruous, like playing Yahtzee or setting up a goofy death match of the undead.
  • In this strip, he actually does go shopping. At QuestBuy.
  • Inverted later when Nale comments on the dedication of the heroes, then the story cuts to them playing Parcheesi (although Belkar - who is a short order of Sociopathic Hero, with extra sociopath and hold the hero - joins in, so it's still kind of a straight example).
  • In the prequel Start of Darkness, the then human Xykon enjoyed coffee. One of the reasons he descended into full Ax-Crazy evil is that being turned undead robbed him of his sense of taste, meaning he couldn't enjoy coffee anymore.
• The whole point of the "Meanwhile In The Dimension Of Pain" Filler Strips in Sluggy Freelance was to show what the Dimension of Pain demons (who try to steal Torg's soul every Halloween) do the other 364 days of the year. Even when the demons return to canon strips for the "That Which Redeems" arc, we still see them take breaks from slaughtering the human race to do more mundane things, like shopping (albeit for pre-packaged human souls).
• We first meet Butterfly in Collar 6 when she's out walking her slave.
• Roommates (and for a lesser extent its Spin-Off s Girls Next Door and Down the Street) tends to run on this, if for no other reasons than most of the characters are villains and out of their own continuity. So they are out shopping, at work (the local university is an interesting place), doing laundry, having a movie night (watching their own movies, no less), eating sushi (don't ask about the bar), having picnics, and playing video games amongst others.
• Samurai Princess: Nicholas and their pet raccoon engage in banter while having some ice cream at cafe after shopping.
• The Adventures of Superhero Girl: Superhero girl runs into a shopping ninja.
• Greta Gravity and Doctor Universe out getting ice cream in Spinnerette. Coincidentally, this is occuring at the same time that Spinny and Mecha Maid decided to take some time off from their training by the Canadians.
• Chapter 14 of Evil Plan begins by showing a "fourit" imageboard discussion on current affairs. It's revealed that Anguish, the most respected villain in the series, enjoys spending his time on this universes' version of 4chan in an astonishingly normal manner.
• The Sanity Circus: Sammy Talbot is introduced out shopping for stamps to improve his collection. Unfortunately, the shopkeeper ignores him while he makes an important phone call. Sammy didn't like to be kept waiting.
• Slightly Damned: When waiting for Moonshade's signal to attack the city, the demons are engaging in the St.Citrus flower festival. In particular we see Psycho for Hire Azurai eating a drumstick and wearing a new hat (which he got by killing a guy when he wasn't supposed to) and Iratu buying booze, which he pays for using money taken from an old couple Azurai earlier killed.
• Homestuck has a very on the nose example when Diamonds Droog, a villainous member of the Midnight Crew gang, gets teleported to next week by an enemy and finds himself grocery shopping.
• Twisted Tropes: Cacodemons are angry, floating, one-eyed, demonic pieces of overripe fruit. In the webcomic, they enjoy shopping and try on some nice hats, they lovingly look at laptops and then cuddle with puppies.

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